Chapter 4 - The Missing Minutes on Ridge Six

Graham Rusk arrived at my office with an immaculate tie, a folder of quarterly figures, and the expression of a man approaching an unpleasant but manageable conversation.

"I understand you've been examining settled employee claims," he said.

"I've been examining records."

"We have departments for that."

"Apparently they missed a few things."

He placed his folder on the desk without opening it.

"You're recovering. Every unplanned investigation creates uncertainty, and uncertainty makes our lenders nervous."

"My brother's name appears on an approval entered after his death. Does that make you nervous?"

Rusk's face barely changed. It was a remarkable performance.

"A migration artifact, perhaps. Some historical approvals were digitized in batches. You cannot treat an upload timestamp as proof of forgery."

He was right about one thing. I couldn't.

"Then there should be an underlying approval," I said. "Find it."

"Of course."

"And preserve the original Ridge Six invoices, inspection photographs, and any correspondence about that barrier."

He considered me for a moment.

"Thomas was very thorough," he said softly. "But reopening the circumstances of his death may not bring you the comfort you expect."

I did not tell him comfort wasn't what I was looking for.

After he left, I called an outside attorney Thomas had once recommended, Anika Shah. She specialized in internal investigations and insisted, before she would review a single document, that the company preserve records and that an independent board committee authorize access.

"If Mr. Rusk controls the systems you want examined," she said, "you don't let him select the evidence."

Within two hours, I had secured authorization from two independent directors and sent a preservation notice to finance, facilities, legal, and security. I asked Vince to retain the original incident video and access logs from Diane's fall, including backup copies. I also instructed him to document who had accessed the records since June's complaint.

He discovered something troubling immediately.

The employee-clinic camera recorded the hallway where Alan Dorsey had confronted June. Its footage was missing a twelve-minute segment on the afternoon her bruises appeared. The risk office had marked the gap as routine maintenance.

"The cameras on either side were operating," Vince said. "Only that one was missing."

"Can you recover it?"

"Not from the system directly. But a hallway camera across the courtyard may show who entered and left. I've asked the external security provider to preserve its copies."

I looked through the windows toward the private pavilion. Yesterday, a woman had entered through a gate left open during repairs. Today, I was learning how often our records said things hadn't happened.

At noon June called. Her friend Nora Blake, who worked at the resort and had won the union raffle, wanted to speak with me. I arranged for both of them to come to the small garden meeting room rather than my office.

Nora was a quick-speaking housekeeper with practical shoes and the weary confidence of someone accustomed to solving problems without receiving credit. She confirmed the raffle had been genuine. She had entered months before, won a two-night guest voucher, and given it to June after an unexpected shift kept her from traveling.

"She'd been sleeping in hospital chairs for weeks," Nora told me. "I thought a quiet weekend might help. I had no idea she'd find the one pool nobody was supposed to use."

June gave her a look. "Neither did I."

Nora had something else to say. The north annex staircase had drawn complaints from staff long before Diane's fall. A maintenance crew had installed new treads afterward, then ordered workers not to discuss the replacement with guests or auditors.

"Who gave that instruction?" I asked.

"Elliot Shaw, the facilities contractor. He said it came from risk management."

The name was familiar from the Ridge Six work orders. Shaw's company, Ridgecrest Works, had performed the allegedly completed barrier replacement.

I wrote it down and asked Nora whether she'd give the same account to Anika.

"If the union representative can be present," she said.

"Yes."

June watched me carefully. She had every reason to assume the owner would promise fairness in one room and quietly reverse it in another.

When Nora left, June lingered near the doorway.

"Why are you doing this now?" she asked.

"Because I should have done it before."

"That's an answer people give when they don't want to say what changed."

I could have told her about Thomas. Instead, I told her something harder.

"I believed I was the one paying the price for that accident. I was wrong."

She looked down at my right arm.

"Have you booked the appointment?"

I had. An independent neurologist, Dr. Imani Reed, would see me the following morning. When I told June, the guarded tension in her face eased slightly.

That evening, Vince brought me video from the north annex courtyard. It did not show Dorsey grabbing June's wrist. It showed him following her into the employee-clinic corridor, and seven minutes later June emerging alone, holding her wrist. Dorsey appeared afterward with an employee notebook tucked under his arm.

June had said he tried to take Diane's notebook. Had he taken another copy?

"Don't circulate this," I told Vince. "Give it to Anika, retain the original, and let June decide what she wants to report."

Vince nodded. His loyalty had never been in doubt. His willingness to question the machinery he guarded was something newer.

Later, Ruth brought a tray of soup to my study. She had done that for Thomas when he worked through meals and now did it for me, despite my repeated assurances that I could feed myself.

"He called you at four," she said suddenly.

I looked up.

"Thomas?"

"Every afternoon he could. He knew you stopped answering business calls then, so he used those minutes to ask how you were instead of asking about the company."

After the accident, four o'clock had become a border around an absence I couldn't describe. Ruth knew. She always had.

"I'm looking into the road," I said.

She placed the tray on the desk. "Then remember he would want you to know what happened, not punish yourself for what you can't remember."

At ten that night, Anika called with her first finding. Ridgecrest Works had invoiced Hollow Pine for replacement barrier materials and certified installation labor. But the records showed no matching delivery receipt to Ridge Six.

"There may be an innocent explanation," she said. "We need the contractor's records and bank trail. But there is another problem."

She sent an image of the finance approval chain. Three people had signed the payment after Thomas died. One was Rusk. Another was an accounts supervisor. The third was an electronic stamp bearing Thomas's name.

"Who authorized that stamp?" I asked.

"The system records the administrator who activated it," she said. "We haven't verified the human behind the login."

I stared at the name on the screen.

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GRAHAM RUSK — FINANCE ADMINISTRATOR.

At precisely the moment he had told me Thomas's approval was probably a migration artifact, Rusk had known the digital record pointed back to his own account.